Electronic files that were stolen from a prominent climate research center and made public last week provide a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes battle to shape the public perception of global warming. …
The text seems to be made by a person that only just give it a glance.
Trying to manipulate peer review, destroying evidence and sources, conspiring to not respect FOIA, besides issues with data. We now for this blogger that is normal scientific process...Now we are supposed to continue to trust them.
I really hope it was a too fast read over the issue.
The title of this post makes no sense. If you already knew that academia works this way, then for you it's not news on academia. If you didn't, then you probably overestimated the strength of academic consensus on climate, and therefore this story should also be news on climate. That is, you should be less sure that the academic consensus on climate is correct after seeing this story.
"Among this craven crew, Professor Hanson is particularly frank. The boldface is his:
"Yup, this behavior has long been typical when academics form competing groups, whether the public hears about such groups or not. If you knew how academia worked, this news would not surprise you nor change your opinions on global warming. I’ve never done this stuff, and I’d like to think I wouldn’t, but that is cheap talk since I haven’t had the opportunity. This works as a “scandal” only because of academia’s overly idealistic public image.
It is a shame that academia works this way, and an academia where this stuff didn’t happen would probably be more accurate. But even our flawed academic consensus is usually more accurate than its contrarians, and it is hard to find reliable cheap indicators saying when contrarians are more likely to be right."
If you don’t like this state of affairs join me in trying to develop a more reliable consensus mechanism on such topics: prediction markets. You'll note that Professor Hanson is saying the same thing as me - with only three differences.
One: this doesn't change his opinion of global warming. Nor does it change mine. But he started out believing in it! Somehow, the actual facts of the matter are too unimportant to engage his attention. Does this inspire you to engage Professor Hanson to help overcome your biases?
Two: he expresses no shame whatsoever at being a member of this basically criminal endeavor. Indeed, if he has ever before bothered to inform his readers of the nature of his Mafia oath, I missed the post. How kind of him, to help his readers overcome their bias! You know, the one toward unconditionally trusting the products of Science - just on account of the name, it seems.
And three: his "solution" is... well... retarded. Like any design for the production of government by formula without human intervention, it is a perpetual-motion machine. There is no way to produce good government (or good management) without good people in a good organizational structure. Professor Hanson is certainly not the first to dabble in the transformation, by ritual mathematics, of base metals into precious. He would be the first, however, to make it work!
But other than that, he's exactly right. What you'll find, historically, is that his is the perspective of every decent cog in a bad wheel: not even slightly unaware or demented. There are never good cogs in a bad wheel, but there are always decent ones. You will find this exact same Oriental mentality in: Reinhard Spitzy's How We Squandered The Reich (National Socialism); Alexander Barmine's One Who Survived (early Communism); or Victor Klemperer's The Lesser Evil (late Communism).
The perspective is that - sure - the system is bad. It is bad. Criminal? Sure. Thus, anyone who has seen the machine from the inside cannot possibly be surprised by Climategate. That's just how professors behave! At least, now that professors run the world. Acton gets it right again."
I don't think we have to know anything what kinds of studies were involved to know that it isn't a good practice in general for scientists to collude to let someone who is criticized help block the publication of his critics. Why would that be a truth-seeking practice? Sure, anyone who has been criticized knows a lot about the issue, but he will also be rather biased and self-interested as to whether his critics have a point.
If successful manipulation of a climate change prediction market had even a minuscule chance of effecting policy, then it would be profitable for energy companies could spend billions of dollars on manipulation. That is literally several million times more money then has ever been seen in a prediction market.
At that level, you would need serious financial firms to close the stat-arb opportunity. Considering the very long time pace of climate change, there are probably much more profitable uses of capital, I don't think any funds would bother.
Case in point: http://stochasticdemocracy.... , when a surge of enthusiastic republicans created an arbitrage opportunity between the IEM and intrade Obama contracts for over a month. And that was on a much smaller scale....
See here for the full story of (some of) the FOI requests.
As I said, the issue is not Trenberth or scientists talking smack. It is the illegal evasion of legitmate scientific requests for data needed to replicate a scientific study. Without replication, science cannot move forwards. And when you only give data to friends of yours, and not to people who actually might take a critical look at it, you know what you end up with? A “consensus” …
Even if there are breaks, as long as there remains an economic incentive for a company to reduce it's carbon footprint, there can be a benefit. People always want to make money.
However politically intricate and challenging it will be to create some incentive system, we shall have to do it or suffer the consequences. My personal opinion is that the consequences will become more visible soon, because there has been a La-Nina cooling cycle for the last few years, and it seems to be shifting to an El-Nina warming cycle. (The difference is marked by certain southern Pacific storm patterns.) That means that the warming trend has been to some extent hidden recently, and will now go into an above-trend mode. (This is just my opinion, based on reading.) If that's correct, the emphasis on climate change, which has been diffused by the current economic situation, may re-form.
Spin Spin spin spin spin. I guess I'm evil and work for an evil oil company because I can asses the facts of reality objectively and recognize a scam and an organized political power grab when I see it.
Noise in the results is all right - that doesn't translate directly into noise in the ex ante estimates, which is what we want. Incentives to manipulate the markets should make their prices more accurate.
Robin- I think this has more problems than most markets because:1. The important results are obscured by noise except on an unusually long time scale for such markets.2. If the market has some value (i.e. is used to influence policy) the financial interests in distorting it will absolutely dwarf the typical scale of a market.
This is not an Intrade election market, where an amateurish attempt to distort the results was detectable and not very effective. Fossil fuel companies could fund long-term sophisticated distortion without breaking a financial sweat.
Unfortunately those economists are mostly unaware of what a mess taxes are in the real world, quite aside from the political problems. We imposed cap and trade on the rest of the world at Kyoto when many of them wanted taxes. Now they have it, or at least Europe does, and telling them to switch to taxes now is simply out of the question. Forget it.
Also, there is a nasty problem of equalizing things at borders. You may think this is trivial. It is not. The Scandinavian governments made an agreement quite a few years ago to impose carbon taxes and then equalize across their borders. They have yet to do so, and if they cannot, there is no way it will happen at the global level.
Part of the problem here is that people compare the messy reality of actually existing (or proposed) cap and trade systems with a textbook nirvana of a "simple" tax system. But, if indeed taxes could be passed in the US (which is not the case), one would find the same industries getting breaks from them that are getting breaks under cap and trade. Get real.
Because of the "t" word, carbon taxes are not likely to be introduced in the U.S., but many economists have come to the conclusion that it would be far simpler and more flexible to implement carbon taxes than cap & trade.
Both work by giving manufacturers a financial incentive to reduce production of CO2 but allowing them to use their ingenuity as to the method. That incentive pushes them in the direction of producing less and less CO2, but in a cost-effective manner.
This method worked well as part of acid-rain regulation in the U.S.
Betting on 'damage futures' could be easier than you think. Governments and re-insurance companies routinely issue "catastrophe bonds". They work like normal bonds except that their re-payment is partially or completely waived if a natural disaster occurs. Investors use them as a source of diversifcation, since their risk is quite uncorrelated with economic conditions. But the price of these bonds should closely reflect the expected severity and probability of disasters linked to climate change.
Someone has to decide what the final document looks like. Just because someone makes a comment does not mean that he is right.
I am involved in the creation of technical standards, a process involving lots of people and ideas from competing companies and countries. After the first draft is produced, comments are submitted by all and sundry. All of these comments have to be addressed by the group drafting the standard: Some comments are accepted and incorporated into the new draft; others are not accepted (because they miss the point) but inspire clarification; and yet others are just wrong, and not accepted at all.
Everybody involved and invited has the right to make comments; but no one has the right to mandate his comments on the draft. It is still the group's decision.
The text seems to be made by a person that only just give it a glance.
Trying to manipulate peer review, destroying evidence and sources, conspiring to not respect FOIA, besides issues with data. We now for this blogger that is normal scientific process...Now we are supposed to continue to trust them.
I really hope it was a too fast read over the issue.
The title of this post makes no sense. If you already knew that academia works this way, then for you it's not news on academia. If you didn't, then you probably overestimated the strength of academic consensus on climate, and therefore this story should also be news on climate. That is, you should be less sure that the academic consensus on climate is correct after seeing this story.
For me, this is real news.
"Among this craven crew, Professor Hanson is particularly frank. The boldface is his:
"Yup, this behavior has long been typical when academics form competing groups, whether the public hears about such groups or not. If you knew how academia worked, this news would not surprise you nor change your opinions on global warming. I’ve never done this stuff, and I’d like to think I wouldn’t, but that is cheap talk since I haven’t had the opportunity. This works as a “scandal” only because of academia’s overly idealistic public image.
It is a shame that academia works this way, and an academia where this stuff didn’t happen would probably be more accurate. But even our flawed academic consensus is usually more accurate than its contrarians, and it is hard to find reliable cheap indicators saying when contrarians are more likely to be right."
If you don’t like this state of affairs join me in trying to develop a more reliable consensus mechanism on such topics: prediction markets. You'll note that Professor Hanson is saying the same thing as me - with only three differences.
One: this doesn't change his opinion of global warming. Nor does it change mine. But he started out believing in it! Somehow, the actual facts of the matter are too unimportant to engage his attention. Does this inspire you to engage Professor Hanson to help overcome your biases?
Two: he expresses no shame whatsoever at being a member of this basically criminal endeavor. Indeed, if he has ever before bothered to inform his readers of the nature of his Mafia oath, I missed the post. How kind of him, to help his readers overcome their bias! You know, the one toward unconditionally trusting the products of Science - just on account of the name, it seems.
And three: his "solution" is... well... retarded. Like any design for the production of government by formula without human intervention, it is a perpetual-motion machine. There is no way to produce good government (or good management) without good people in a good organizational structure. Professor Hanson is certainly not the first to dabble in the transformation, by ritual mathematics, of base metals into precious. He would be the first, however, to make it work!
But other than that, he's exactly right. What you'll find, historically, is that his is the perspective of every decent cog in a bad wheel: not even slightly unaware or demented. There are never good cogs in a bad wheel, but there are always decent ones. You will find this exact same Oriental mentality in: Reinhard Spitzy's How We Squandered The Reich (National Socialism); Alexander Barmine's One Who Survived (early Communism); or Victor Klemperer's The Lesser Evil (late Communism).
The perspective is that - sure - the system is bad. It is bad. Criminal? Sure. Thus, anyone who has seen the machine from the inside cannot possibly be surprised by Climategate. That's just how professors behave! At least, now that professors run the world. Acton gets it right again."
http://unqualified-reservat...
I don't think we have to know anything what kinds of studies were involved to know that it isn't a good practice in general for scientists to collude to let someone who is criticized help block the publication of his critics. Why would that be a truth-seeking practice? Sure, anyone who has been criticized knows a lot about the issue, but he will also be rather biased and self-interested as to whether his critics have a point.
Hydrologically, I don't think that will work out.
If successful manipulation of a climate change prediction market had even a minuscule chance of effecting policy, then it would be profitable for energy companies could spend billions of dollars on manipulation. That is literally several million times more money then has ever been seen in a prediction market.
At that level, you would need serious financial firms to close the stat-arb opportunity. Considering the very long time pace of climate change, there are probably much more profitable uses of capital, I don't think any funds would bother.
Case in point: http://stochasticdemocracy.... , when a surge of enthusiastic republicans created an arbitrage opportunity between the IEM and intrade Obama contracts for over a month. And that was on a much smaller scale....
Looking for better context?
See here for the full story of (some of) the FOI requests.
As I said, the issue is not Trenberth or scientists talking smack. It is the illegal evasion of legitmate scientific requests for data needed to replicate a scientific study. Without replication, science cannot move forwards. And when you only give data to friends of yours, and not to people who actually might take a critical look at it, you know what you end up with? A “consensus” …
Read the whole thing. It is quite damning.
So Robin, what do you think about climate-change insurance?
Barkley,
Even if there are breaks, as long as there remains an economic incentive for a company to reduce it's carbon footprint, there can be a benefit. People always want to make money.
However politically intricate and challenging it will be to create some incentive system, we shall have to do it or suffer the consequences. My personal opinion is that the consequences will become more visible soon, because there has been a La-Nina cooling cycle for the last few years, and it seems to be shifting to an El-Nina warming cycle. (The difference is marked by certain southern Pacific storm patterns.) That means that the warming trend has been to some extent hidden recently, and will now go into an above-trend mode. (This is just my opinion, based on reading.) If that's correct, the emphasis on climate change, which has been diffused by the current economic situation, may re-form.
Interesting, I wonder if it would be possible to study them, or even promote them?
I recall hearing that Munich Re, a re-insurance company, was building in big damage estimates due to climate change, a few years ago.
Spin Spin spin spin spin. I guess I'm evil and work for an evil oil company because I can asses the facts of reality objectively and recognize a scam and an organized political power grab when I see it.
ALL CREDIBILITY IS LOST
Noise in the results is all right - that doesn't translate directly into noise in the ex ante estimates, which is what we want. Incentives to manipulate the markets should make their prices more accurate.
Robin- I think this has more problems than most markets because:1. The important results are obscured by noise except on an unusually long time scale for such markets.2. If the market has some value (i.e. is used to influence policy) the financial interests in distorting it will absolutely dwarf the typical scale of a market.
This is not an Intrade election market, where an amateurish attempt to distort the results was detectable and not very effective. Fossil fuel companies could fund long-term sophisticated distortion without breaking a financial sweat.
Neal,
Unfortunately those economists are mostly unaware of what a mess taxes are in the real world, quite aside from the political problems. We imposed cap and trade on the rest of the world at Kyoto when many of them wanted taxes. Now they have it, or at least Europe does, and telling them to switch to taxes now is simply out of the question. Forget it.
Also, there is a nasty problem of equalizing things at borders. You may think this is trivial. It is not. The Scandinavian governments made an agreement quite a few years ago to impose carbon taxes and then equalize across their borders. They have yet to do so, and if they cannot, there is no way it will happen at the global level.
Part of the problem here is that people compare the messy reality of actually existing (or proposed) cap and trade systems with a textbook nirvana of a "simple" tax system. But, if indeed taxes could be passed in the US (which is not the case), one would find the same industries getting breaks from them that are getting breaks under cap and trade. Get real.
Barkley,
Because of the "t" word, carbon taxes are not likely to be introduced in the U.S., but many economists have come to the conclusion that it would be far simpler and more flexible to implement carbon taxes than cap & trade.
Both work by giving manufacturers a financial incentive to reduce production of CO2 but allowing them to use their ingenuity as to the method. That incentive pushes them in the direction of producing less and less CO2, but in a cost-effective manner.
This method worked well as part of acid-rain regulation in the U.S.
Betting on 'damage futures' could be easier than you think. Governments and re-insurance companies routinely issue "catastrophe bonds". They work like normal bonds except that their re-payment is partially or completely waived if a natural disaster occurs. Investors use them as a source of diversifcation, since their risk is quite uncorrelated with economic conditions. But the price of these bonds should closely reflect the expected severity and probability of disasters linked to climate change.
Someone has to decide what the final document looks like. Just because someone makes a comment does not mean that he is right.
I am involved in the creation of technical standards, a process involving lots of people and ideas from competing companies and countries. After the first draft is produced, comments are submitted by all and sundry. All of these comments have to be addressed by the group drafting the standard: Some comments are accepted and incorporated into the new draft; others are not accepted (because they miss the point) but inspire clarification; and yet others are just wrong, and not accepted at all.
Everybody involved and invited has the right to make comments; but no one has the right to mandate his comments on the draft. It is still the group's decision.